1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to exercise and sport apparatuses and systems, and more particularly to cam arm training and monitoring apparatuses for controlling the position of an arm element, ball, weight, or providing resistance training and monitoring for exercise, sport, physical therapy, and the like.
2. Description of Prior Art
With the growing popularity of sport and exercise has come the development of numerous sport training and monitoring apparatuses, exercise training and monitoring apparatuses, and related physical therapy and sports medicine devices. Heretofore, a wide variety of such apparatuses have been proposed and implemented.
A common limitation of all prior exercise and sport training and monitoring devices has been their inability to satisfactorily position and control various parameters of a weight, ball, puck, or arm element holding such weight, ball, or puck, such as height, angle, and tension; nor indicate to the user when a correct hit, stroke, putt, or the like had occurred. Moreover, such prior devices have not provided means for returning the weight, ball, puck, or arm element to an initial starting point, regardless of the angular positioning of the arm element on the device or the amount of movement of the arm. This limitation is significant as prior arm, ball, or weight holding devices could not return the arm or ball or weight against gravity back to an initial starting point when the arm, ball, weight, or the like, was angularly positioned.
A related apparatus invented by the present inventor and disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,238,251 for a volleyball training and monitoring apparatus provided a solution to many of the above limitations for volleyball training and monitoring apparatuses. The present invention is an improvement of this prior invention and is applicable to a wide variety of exercise, sport, weight, and physical training apparatuses.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of this invention to provide an improved cam arm apparatus for use with exercise, sport, weight, and physical training and monitoring apparatus which allows an arm element for holding a ball, weight, puck, or the like to be positioned at any desired angle and tension whereby the arm element is returned to an initial starting point regardless of the angular positioning of the arm or the amount of movement of the arm element resulting from the ball or weight being moved, struck, batted, stroked, or the like, thereby allowing for the return of the arm element against gravity to the initial starting point even if the arm is angularly positioned.
It is a further objective of the invention to provide an exercise and sport training and monitoring apparatus with means to indicate directly to the user whether a correct or an incorrect hit or stroke has been made.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.